Time is running out for George and Doreen and we spend some lazy days relaxing and exploring. And then I accompany them back to Belize City in the bus. Without thinking I kind of invite myself in at the Dias’s, they were so hospitable before and I just assumed it would be okay. Mrs Dias didn’t blink much of an eye but I don’t think she was to happy with our intrusion, but we only spent the night and the next day I say good-bye to George and Doreen. Doreen begins to write me alot and send me beautiful poems. She letter heads her letters with a handrawn picture of my face with the Caption the Floyd Stewart Fan Club. I miss the touch of her and her company.

When we arrived in Placentia I noticed an interesting craft anchored real close up to the shore. Three blonde heads poke in and out of it. One day on the beach I meet one of the blonde heads, her name is Tina and we immediately become friends. She is from Wheeling West Virginia and used to be a tennis star. Her friend Noddy, who is from Australia and her daughter live on this 24 ft trimaran made out of Plywood. The cabin windows are made from Volkswagen rear side window and the whole thing is painted yellow, it is called the lemon squeeze? thou my dad coined it the lemon squash after almost dragging into them in a squall, they would have been squash. Tina and Noddy show me the night life around Placentia, we show up at the "Seabreeze" around 10, reggae music so loud it almost hurts. Barefeet and $1.50 bottles of rum, the mixers are what cost money, we can have alot of fun. When it gets too loud we go out on the beach and sit on this log listening to the waves crash on the beach. These are special moments, it feels like we are sailing this log out to new destinations. I listen to Tina and Noddy tell be about their experiences, Noddy’s ex-husband, who I meet later lives up to his name of Crazy Chris. They buy an old lifeboat in New Orleans and rig it with a square mast, I wish I could remember the name (Southern Scrap), Their daughter is born on the boat in the middle of the gulf and they have a hard time of it. It takes them forever to make Isla Mujeres and try as they might they can’t make it against the current to go further south. Noddy goes on to Belize by land as Chris tries one more attempt. Somewhere he hits a reef and the boat sinks. Together in Belize they buy the Lemon Squeeze and explore the country. Eventually they split up but remain friends. Noddy meets Tina and together they fight off hoards of men who eventually decide that they are lovers. Whether they are or not I don’t know but I know Noddy likes men, but Tina I have never seen her express much interest and believe me to get in her pants was a great aspiration of mine.

Around 12 midnight the party would begin at Cozy Corner and we would dance until day

creeps in. This is what I didn’t realize the first night we were here, we didn’t stay up late enough. The people and the place is fascinating all the travelers coming thru, especially the single women mostly school teachers. The little fishing village which is Placentia is strung out all along this little peninsula connected together by this little narrow sidewalk, installed and used for wheelbarrows, only the gringos walk on it. Life settles down and I get to know a few of the inhabitants and places to go for freshly baked bread and cookies and for a seaweed punch, which is really really good like a milkshake. I meet Doris at the post office who must weigh 300 lbs and I meet Harry Ealy, a local guy who makes his living chartering out to tourists. We become good friends and I like the way Harry looks at the world, he is married to a gringo from Holland or Netherlands? And although he can be dishonest and a con man to some, I learn alot about Belize and life here thru Harry. One day I see him up against a tree with his hat over his eyes, I ask him what he is doing, "hiding" but I say "you are right out here in the open", he replies "If I can’t see anyone, they cannot see me" and he lifts up his hat. Harry also tells me about the ecology around here and the special symbiosis coconut palms have with people. They need people to clear out a living space around them, to keep from getting choked off by other plants and in return the supply coconuts for which people eat use for firewood, wear and make things from. He also shows me how to clean Conch and to make wonderful soup from them. He guides Aphrodite out to the nearby reefs and we go snorkeling in a amazing world of coral and beautiful fish.

Tina is continually on my mind and one day when Dad and Suzy are in town I invite her out to Aphrodite. My plan is to get her drunk and receptive but soon I am falling over and Tina looks as sober as ever. I tell her my plan and she just laughs, oh well.... We do however spend alot of time together, every morning I see her out swimming her 3 or 4 miles and at night we usually hang out. One afternoon on Lemon Squeeze she expresses a desire for a swim, I don’t have my bathing suit so I tell her if she doesn’t mind my birthday suit, but I think she doesn’t hear me. Because I strip and plunge in and when we get back on the boat she bats an eye and says oh that’s what you meant. It wasn’t much of an eye thou.

Microdite, our little sailing dingy becomes my wheels, and I get real good sailing in and out from Aphrodite, sometimes there is no wind and I have to paddle against the current and even when there is wind it doesn’t sail very well and it is a number of tacks up to the beach. I am getting tan and don’t wear shoes and no shirt mostly. It is simply great living like this here, the nights are ecstatic stars and gentle winds mostly. but one night at the Seabreeze a real thunderwapper hits and I go out, a local says something about Aphrodite, which we had tied up at the pier that night, Tina who is worried about the Squeeze and I race down the sidewalk in pelting and pouring rain. I make it to the dock and Aphrodite is heeled way over onto the concrete pier, the railing is already broken and the wind is howling. I race below and get Dad and Suzy and for about an Hour until the wind abates I don’t know how we did it but we kept Aphrodite off the pier using our legs and maneuvering bumpers around with every big swell that filings us against it. Soon the wind dies and we are able to motor off the dock. This is what is known as a Biama a south wind that comes every once in awhile right into the unprotected side of Placencia. I will tell you later how Tina looses her bottoms in a biama.

I become friends with a local lady here, I wish I could remember her name but she is very black but I think she likes me. She has a child and the father her ex is in the states her plan is to sneak in across Mexico and find a new life in the US. She eventually does just that but I often wonder why, Belize is paradise. She invites me one night for a lobster dinner but she doesn’t have alot of money and when I discover it to be lobster head and legs it takes me aback a little but I found it very good. I probably could have slept with her that night, I think that is what she was hoping, she was wearing a see thru kind of blouse and very provocative but I valued her as a friend and I know I didn’t want to complicate that with anything other, our worlds are too far apart.

Every month we have to renew our passports, normally this entails going into Big Creek but more often than not the officer is not there and this necessitates taking the Aphrodite back up to Belize City a 120 mile round trip. This is not really pleasant, Belize City has a terrible anchorage and the place is nosy and full of crappy people. Sometimes we go just to replenish our stores. We hang out at the Bayshore hotel and that is fun. We make friends also with some of the English army that are stationed in the City here on landing craft, I procure some vegimite for Noddy, I know she will appreciate that. These guys are loud and obnoxious and full of macho bullshit but....

One trip to Belize City we leave late and are making our passage north on thru the night. Sat Nav fixes are inconsistent and we are tacking. As we get close one night the old man and Suzy get very disorientated and lose track of our position. I get up for my watch and upon hearing waves crashing on the reef somewhere out in the darkness I whip Aphrodite on the other tack. We try then to look at our surroundings and determine where we are. It would seem that we should be able to make out the light on Robinson Cay and we do find a light and head for it. A couple of hours go by when out of the darkness I make out what looks like shoreline. Completely lost now we just anchor in about 30 ft of water and wait for daylight, I stay up and watch our anchor as it is pretty rough. Morning finds us almost in sight of Belize City, what we were headed for was the light beakon at the airport. We sail into Belize City and under sail drop the anchor right next to a boat called Rainbow.

I have really come to dread having to go into the City so I jump at the chance to stay aboard Aphrodite whilst Dad and Suzy go in for supplies, on trips like these sometimes I am on the boat without stepping foot on land for 10 - 11 days, okay by me. Anyway I am hanging out and I notice the boat across from us. There is a kid say 10 years old and it appears he is the only one on board. He is playing with this ball, when a gust of wind grabs it and over the side it goes. The kid immediately jumps over the side after it and is swept by the current very swiftly as it is beyond his ability to swim against. I really don’t know what to do, I don’t have a boat and I don’t think I could swim well enough to catch him. I get on the radio to Belize Port and explain what happened. Back topside I lose track of the kid thru my binoculars and it is at least 20 or 30 minutes before I hear a patrol boat over the VHF. Finally someone spots a kid coming out of the water about 3 miles down from my position, so it appears the kid has had a close call and made it. I never say anything to the parents later but I can imagine the kid having to explain why he is ashore without a boat.

Back in Placencia we meet the infamous ‘Hard Luck Charlie" on this trip and my later voyages it is always amazing to me the very interesting and various characters. He invites us to come down to his place (and once again my memory fails me but it is near Punta Negro) and with another boat, a Trimaran we set off one day. As we approach the general area we learn another lesson in navigation, from the water Cays blend in with the shore line and with no landmarks it all looks the same. One minute you may decide what you are looking at and it falls into place, but then you blink an eye and it is gone. Also your eyes can fool you and what you want to see is what you see. We are standing off a ways and have no idea how to enter the lagoon, drawing so much water we could get in trouble real fast. Finally after discussing our situation on the radio with Charley we head on in and luck finds us and we get inside. Tina and Noddy are here! and we anchor close by. Charley is a man of many talents and master of none, bad luck seems to follow him wherever, every great dream he has ever had lies rusting and rotting in this little harbor of his. His boatyard railway, his wooden boat sitting anchored in the bay. We go up to his house, where he lives with his wife and 3 children. it is made from all kinds of junk, pop bottles beer cans old tires. Having the kids to watch all the time keep Charley or his wife ashore all the time and they want to party. They don’t have company all that often and pretty soon tempers flare on who is watching the kids. One night we see Charley’s wife paddling off into the darkness mad as hell and threatening to never return. On the other hand they are very generous and treat us to a wonderful barbecue. We talk to one of the local people that help Charley around the place. He is Mayan and tells us he can guide us up deep river to some Mayan ruins that have barely been discovered. Unfortunately we do not have the time to take the trip. One afternoon a thunder squall sweeps in as we are sitting below having lunch. The boat heels with the wind and I look out the port hole, we are dragging and headed for the Lemon Squeeze. My Dad yells out "we’re headed for the Lemon Squash!" and the name stuck. topside we let out more scope and we come to a stop, I then set a second anchor to make sure we do not move any more.

We have an uneventful trip back to Placentia, everything is pretty much the same when we left, my first stop is for a Seaweed milkshake.

Keeping in touch with our Belizean friends in Louisiana Ian agrees to drive our Volkswagen bus down from the states. Pretty soon they arrive and it is nice to see Ian, Angie, Telle and Ana again. We use the van to go back up North to see there folks and play around. We stop at the blue cave which off the highway and it is a pool with a cave that goes into the side of the cliff underwater. It is really beautiful and nice to swim in. I shock everybody again because I have no swimsuit but I could see Telli get real red in the face. We stop again up in the Mayan Mountains where this stream goes thru and makes all this pools all around these huge boulders. Good swimming and refreshing water. About this time the Van develops some starting problems and even thou I do make it back to Placentia it is really the end of it, the mechanic who says he can fix it never never does and it just sits there until we sell it for a song. We really didn’t need a car down here anyway.

My Dad trusts everyone and is very generous, but he never rests if someone doesn’t treat him right. He loans our speargun to a local kid who never seems to bring it back. Finally Dad goes to the local constable and the speargun reappears but with a price, the fee for this great detective work by the local man in blue is a pair of swimfins, which is more useful for us than our speargun, which we never used.

We meet Mike and Bonnie who have been here in Belize for a couple of years on their trimaran. They are quite the characters, Mike seems to drink alot and they are alot of fun. One night he is so drunk he can only crawl back to the boat down the sidewalk for ¼ mile on his knees. The next morning he discovers that they are a bloody mess. He tells us all about Roatan in the Bay Islands of Honduras. I copy his charts by hand and we make plans to take a trip over which is about ninety miles from here. Tina is interested in going along so we make the trip up to Belize City to check out.

The first day we make it to the anchorage off of Lighthouse Reef and spend the night. The next morning we get underway. Suzy tells me to set a course of 270 degs but I think she says 170 degs. An hour later I see palm trees on the horizon where there should be none, then I realize my mistake. It takes a 3 or 4 hours to get back on course beating against the wind. Needless to say I feel very bad.

That night on watch with Tina I notice running lights on the horizon. Time passes and it seems like we are on a collision course. After a while I can make out the lights and I believe that it is a tug boat pushing a barge, that would make the lights run from left to right and I decide that they will pass to the stern of us. We start getting real, real close and I then realize it is a tug boat pulling a barge and that makes everything different! As I am making an escape course change, my Dad comes up from below just as the Captain of the barge comes over the radio wondering our intentions. My Dad, only knowing what I had told him before about them passing astern tells the Captain, "No problem you are passing to the stern" I often wonder what expletives that Captain had for us. Stupid assholes was one of them I bet.